1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to managing patient consent. In particular, the invention relates to a system for managing patient consent for accessing patient information in a Master Patient Index.
2. Description of the Related Art
Providing quality health care and related services (e.g., pharmaceutical services, veterinary services) depends on having the ability to reliably access various types of records. In the case of patients, information regarding a particular patient may be needed by various different types of health care related entities. For example, any one a hospital, a health care organization, a clinic or hospital lab, an insurance company, or a pharmacy may need access to particular computerized patient information. Such information retrieval generally occurs by querying a database associated with the health care related entity performing the query. The database typically contains all or part of what is referred to as a “Master Patient Index” (MPI), which is a collection of patient information and identifiers. Particularly, an MPI is a collection of indexed patient records, where each record contains information about a particular patient. In practice, user-level applications submit known or believed patient information to the database, which then uses the MPI to match the incoming data with information stored in the database. If a match is found, the record (or pointer thereto) is returned to the querying entity.
While a typical MPI is designed to work within or for a particular health care related entity (e.g., a single hospital, a medical group), including among disparate information systems across the health care related entity, the increased mobility of individuals throughout the overall health care system and the constant evolution of health care in general requires that patient information be reliably accessible by a local, state, regional or national community of health care related entities.
A problem arises when a physician accesses patient data for a patient that the physician has not yet been assigned. For example, when an emergency room physician treats a patient, the physician needs the patient's medical records without the delay that is incurred when the hospital goes through the normal routines of assigning the patient to the physician. This access to the patient's medical information is referred to as “breaking glass.” Once the emergency is addressed, problems arise with whether the physician continues to have access to the medical records, whether there is an opportunity for abusing this system and whether there should be additional protection of patient information for patients that are public figures.